One Year
by EffervescentGrace
Summary: Will Solace as told in seasons.


**Summer**

It's the first day of summer and Will has stopped crying. He has cried for every day of the winter and the spring, and now, as the sun shines weakly through the hazy clouds that come from a night of rain, he has finally stopped.

It's not easy to lose a loved one.

It's not easy to lose two, three, four.

The pain of one death is doused in the bitterness and grief of the next, amplified by the cruel gift of Apollo. The gift to save lives that is wasted when one can't simply _get there quick enough. Why couldn't he just get there quick enough oh gods please it's all his fault all his fault Michael and Lee and Silena and Luke and Ethan why wasn't he quick enough to save people when all he knew how to do was save people and he couldn't even do that and if he couldn't even do that then what was the point exactly?_

Will is never sure what that question meant. The point of what? His powers? The war? Their lives? His?

He wonders infinitely, it seems, about what could have happened. He wonders whether he's ever actually helped anyone, truly. And he wonders what it's like to not worry about the safety of others so much. And he wonders what it's like not to be the son of the God of healing and medicine and the sun. And he wonders why he was born caring so much when his father cared so little. And he wonders what it was like to be mortal. And he wonders what it's like to truly be living. And he wonders what it's like to die.

He wonders whether it is as painful to die as it is to watch one pass.

He's almost certain it isn't.

It's the first day of summer and Will has stopped crying but he hasn't stopped weeping.

 **Autumn**

It is the sixteenth day of autumn, Leaves fall from the trees of Central Park and Will has started smiling. He is sitting beside Lou, and is watching Cecil attempt to feed the ducks, and his lips are tugged upwards in a faint smile that feels tight in his face, as if the muscles haven't been used properly in a long time. Percy is missing and the new demigods are on a dangerous quest and Will is filled to the brim with nausea but he can't help it when he sees Cecil flail wildly.

He wonders infinitely still, about his brother and his friend, and his fellow campers. The ones he had loved with a passion that was too much to name. He wonders about them when he gazes through the infirmary window, his eyes following the thin line of an unlucky camper's arrow as it flies across the vast blue of the sky. He wonders about them when he sees two campers holding hands under the shade of a orange and bronze and gold tree. He wonders about them when he sees the battle people wage in their hearts, resenting the gods but also loving them unconditionally. He wonders and he wonders and he wonders. Constantly, indefinitely, until he is awake at three in the morning surrounded by textbooks on psychology and articles on trauma victims and field medics in war torn countries.

He wonders _why, why, why?_

He's self conscious, because Lou is trying very hard not to stare at him, and her eyes are fogged and glassy. Will places his hand over hers, and she gives a small hiccup and rests her head on Will's shoulder and Will can feel her relief seep into him like an open wound through a bandage.

It is the eighteenth day of Autumn and Will is still weeping.

 **Winter**

It's the seventh day of winter and Will feels like his ribs are going to burst as he contains his laughter. He is standing beside a white bed, and Clarisse is glaring up at him as if he had been the one to stab her in the thigh. It should be intimidating and it is. Tension is high as the heroes sail across the sky to save them from the Giants, but instead of appearing affected, Will straightens and let's his magic work, lighting up his own skin, and then Clarisse's wound, and then she is punching him in the arm hard, demanding to know when he had began using his magic for healing instead of fighting, and when did he even start being able to use it again anyway?

After the Titan War, Will has been as useful as a mortal high schooler who knew first aid. On his bad days, he wasn't even capable of being the counsellor for the Apollo cabin. He remembers vividly, the worried murmurs from his siblings when he stayed curled in his bed from morning until nightfall, and the way Kayla would bring him food when he refused to eat because of his lack of appetite, and how she would lay next to him under his covers, and stroke his hair until he began to sob, and she would wrap her arms around him like his mother always did when he was younger and had a nightmare that simply wouldn't disappear from his mind.

Will smiles faintly, eyes focused somewhere far away, and answers that it occurred when he decided he was never going to fight again.

It is the seventh day of winter and Will smiles and laughs and weeps when he thinks no one is looking.

 **Spring**

It is the twenty eighth day of Spring and Will vomits behind the Big House until all he can taste is acidic stomach bile and grit on his teeth. It is the twenty eighth day of Spring and a burial shrine is being made for a nine year old Ares child who strayed from the camp boundaries and was mauled to death before Will's light could even touch her.

Will slumps against the Big House wall and scratches at the fragile skin of his wrist until it's red and raw, and his veins are prominent. He stares at his useless, useless hands and curses himself, and condemns his father for making him such a horrible excuse of a healer. And then he hits his right hand repeatedly with a heavy rock until Drew happens upon him and screams at him to stop and he only does when she forces him with Charmspeak, mascara lines down her face. By then his hand is damaged, and mangled and dirty, and there's just _blood, blood, blood_ , but what's the use of hands that can't even save just one person when it really matters?

Will knows, later, he'll regret this. He knows that he's needed for the war, that he's fast enough to travel quickly from each of the camp, and his demonic whistle is loud enough to cause a distraction, but he's unable to do so because his right hand is needed to pull one of. But in that moment, with Drew shaking him and crying, he doesn't really care.

It's the twenty eighth day of Spring, and Will is not weeping.

 **Summer-Again**

It is the forty fifth day of summer and Will's face is twisted into a scowl. Nico di Angelo is annoying, and Will doesn't really like him at all. And he feels bad, as Nico glares and is so self loathing, hate dripping like poison and wrapping around him like a vice. Will wants to reach out and pull him forward to help him and push him away simultaneously, scared, scared, scared of this boy who can feel when people die and what that must do to a person. Scared of this boy who knew hell personally and who had faced it alone. Scared of how much he wanted to help him, when Will had only been doing it out of necessity the last few months.

But he _wonders_. And Nico knows, he knows the answers, he can tell Will and that's all that matters. So Will says anything he can to make Nico stay, even if it's a partial truth and a partial lie, and yes he feels bad but if he can _know. If he can know._

He could be forgiven, right?

And when the war is over and Gaea sleeps once again and Will is in scrubs tending to the wounded, he demands Nico stays in the infirmary, so he can know. And so he can heal, with his damaged, scarred hands.

It is summer again, and the Titan War is over, and so is the Giant War, and Will wants to finally start weeping again because weeping is so much better than the emptiness he feels inside.


End file.
